Crittercism: iOS Apps Crash More Than Android Apps

Ah yes, the iOS vs. Android debate is a seemingly neverending battle. Each has it’s pros and cons when it comes to both hardware and software. It’s no secret that iOS is a seemingly stable, an aesthetically stunning and a beautiful OS, while its simplified nature has won over the masses. As popular and successful as iOS is, we all know it’s all about its sheer number of apps. It’s no secret the number of iOS apps is far greater than what is available for the Android platform. It’s also no secret Android users complain about certain apps crashing perhaps because of compatibility or an app being far from a finished product. But what about iOS users, why hasn’t anyone complained about the iOS apps and those subsequent apps crashing? So let’s ponder this question: “Do iOS apps crash more than Android apps?” Well there are some people who have been pondering that very question and sought out to answer it. A recent study was completed by independent mobile app monitoring research firm Crittercism that yielded some surprising results. While additional testing needs to be done, Crittercism’s preliminary findings suggests that iOS apps do crash more than Android apps.

Keep in mind that both platforms have their fair share of crashes, but iOS crashes more. Crittercism conducted a one month study testing apps on both platforms and in the first quartile, found while Android apps crashed 0.15% of the time upon being launched, iOS apps crashed 0.51% of the time upon being launched. Forbes then highlights Crittercism found in the second quartile of apps, Android apps crashed 0.73% of the time and iOS apps crashed 1.47% of their launches. In the third quartile of apps, Android apps crashed 2.97% of the time, while iOS apps crashed 3.66% of the time.

While iOS crashing more than Android is a bit of surprise, Crittercism does highlight one key fact. By providing a breakdown of crashes by OS, it finds iOS 5.0.1 has the most crashes of all iOS versions, coming in at a whopping 33.93%. Conversely, Android 2.3.3 has the most crashes coming in at 24.76% of all Android versions. So it’s possible that because iOS 5.0.1 is a new operating system and developers have yet to tweak codes in apps, it’s causing for some incompatibility and thus crashes. The results and findings could possibly change once Android 4.0 is thrown into the mix and we see more apps and updates for ICS devices. Also keep in mind that developers for iOS have it rougher than the Android platform. According to Forbes:

“Android, it should be noted, allows developers to push updates faster than Apple. With Android developers can just send an update to its code, which can show up almost in real-time. But for iOS it can takes days or a week for an update to show up. That means there can be more crashes while those updates are waiting to happen. Whereas with Android, presumably if developers know there’s a bug they can immediately fix it.”

So in essence, the Android platform allows for bugs in apps to immediately be identified and thus, fixed almost immediately. The iOS platform on the other hand does not allow for apps to be fixed on an immediate level— so perhaps it contributes to a big part of why iOS apps encounters more crashes than Android apps.

So there you have it folks. This study needs to be conducted again at another time to verify and confirm the results, but we may end any sort of discussion that claims Android apps crash more than iOS apps… for now.

Conceived as Spock’s 4th cousin, Roy has had quite the life. He was born in beautiful San Jose, California, raised in Los Angeles, California and now resides in the greater New York City area. He has always been fascinated and obsessed with technology, especially the continuous advancements of mobile platforms. He was a Blackberry slave since his undergrad days at the University of Southern California until realizing in Feb. 2011, there were greener pastures in the land of Android. His first Android phone was the Motorola Atrix 4G, and he hasn’t looked back. He currently works in corporate media, enjoys following media and technology trends, reading a good book, weightlifting, playing on his XBOX 360 and conversing with total strangers.

http://twitter.com/outlikelions Justin Jacobs

makes sense, i know that with ios 5 there were a lot of crashes just waiting for the apps to catch up